海角大神

As I , Republicans have taken the position that the current ongoing talk of the impeachment of President Obama is nothing more than a Democratic fundraising ploy in advance of the midterm elections. While it is true, , that Democrats are currently talking about the issue more than Republicans, a little bit of research reveals the following:

• As early as 2011, Congressman Michael Burgess (R) of Texas was quoted as saying that聽
• More recently, in May 2013, Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R) was聽
• In August, Rep. Blake Farenthold (R) of Texas expressed disappointment that Congress had not pursued the issue of Mr. Obama鈥檚 birth certificate, and said that聽
• That same month, Rep. Kerry Bentivolio (R) of Michigan said聽
• Also in August of last year, Tom Coburn (R) of Oklahoma, normally a voice of reason in the Senate, said that聽
• In September, Sen. John McCain (R) of Arizona, who had spent the better part of two years calling on the president to be more assertive in connection with the civil war in Syria, said that聽
• In October, both (R) of Minnesota and聽 (R) of Texas raised the specter of impeachment.
• In November, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R) told Newsmax radio host Steve Malzburg that聽聽specifically mentioning impeachment;
• In January of this year, Texas Republican Rep. Steve Stockman, who was then in the middle of a quixotic primary campaign against Sen. John Cornyn, said that
• In February, Georgia Republican Rep. Paul Broun said that he would support the president鈥檚 impeachment.
• Just a few weeks ago, Sen. Ron Johnson (R) of Wisconsin said that Obama had 鈥済one beyond鈥� the actions that nearly led to President Nixon鈥檚 impeachment聽before his resignation nearly 40 years ago.
• Finally, of course, there is 聽who recently in an interview with conservative radio host Michael Medved.

Slate鈥檚聽David Weigel goes further:

If impeachment is a scam, it was聽, early in the Obama presidency. Some of its early adherents believed in it; some thought they were merely responding to the聽; some, obviously, wanted to raise money. At the start of this summer, the conservative book-publishing industry churned聽聽about why Republicans needed to start an impeachment conversation, to stop pretending that it was crazy to accuse the president of high crimes and realize that it was consistent with the rest of the party鈥檚 arguments. Republicans mostly refused to listen.

Then, on July 8 of this year,聽. Her PAC (this is important鈥攕ee above, re: fundraising) placed an op-ed at Breitbart.com, announcing that the time had come for the I-word. For inexplicable reasons, Palin can still shift a news cycle; in a lucky synchronicity, the Senate campaign of Iowa Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley chose July 8 to release a tape of his聽.

Nothing will stop a movement quite like the other party noticing it. 鈥淪hould Obama be impeached?鈥� had been 聽the House floor. Meanwhile, helpful (and anonymous) aides were reminding people that聽鈥攑rophetically!鈥攚hen the Republican Congress of 1998 put all of its chips on impeachment and the Clinton scandals. (Boehner later overcame that resistance and聽聽of impeachment.)

One could dismiss many of the calls for impeachment that I list above as political rhetoric from Republicans who were pandering to the base of the party, although it isn鈥檛 hard to believe that people like Representatives Bachmann, Gohmert, Stockman, Broun, and Farenthold were actually serious when they brought up the topic. As I said Tuesday, I think we can take the comments from people like Speaker John Boehner and others who are dismissing the idea of impeachment as a serious idea at face value. They know it鈥檚 a politically dumb idea that would do far more harm to the Republican Party than it would to the president. But they also knew a year ago that going down the government shutdown route was a politically dumb idea that would harm the Republican Party and, yet, they still went down that route when they found that the base of their own party had backed them into a corner. What will they do if they鈥檙e faced with a similar situation when it comes to impeachment? Perhaps we鈥檒l see some profiles in courage at that point, but past history suggests otherwise..

As far as the current debate over who started the impeachment meme, though, the answer to that question is fairly obvious, no matter how much Republicans may want to deny it.

Doug Mataconis appears on the Outside the Beltway blog at .